Margarites (GR: Μαργαρίτες) with 300 inhabitants, is located 27 kilometers from Rethymnon at 300 m above sea level near the amcient town of Eleftherna. Margarites, is a village with Venetian roots, mentioned by sixteenth-century travellers. In the nineteenth century, Margarites was a flourishing town, whose centuries-old ceramic tradition began at least as early as the Ottoman period. Margarites is undoubtedly the most important pottery centre in western Crete.
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Visitors can still visit the remains of stone-built workshops and pottery kilns that once produced all of the necessary household utensils, including storage vessels, ritual vases, and even toys. Nowadays, modern ceramic workshops produce a variety of utilitarian and decorative objects.
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Margarites also features many churches, the most important of which is the church of Saint John the Evangelist, which dates to 1383. Near the village is a dependency of the Karakallou Monastery of Mount Athos.